The defeat and demotion of Postyshev was only the beginning. Over the next few years, the great majority (70 percent) of the Central Committee which had just seen his final and fumbling stand was to follow Bukharin and Rykov to the death cells.
For, politically, Stalin’s battle had now been won. The way was at last completely open to the total annihilation of the old oppositionists. At the same time, by his actions against Postyshev, he had made the first moves to undermining and destroying that group of his own followers who had hoped to block him.
But the main change was that the last attempt to preserve some sort of constitutional procedure had been defeated. In future, he was not to observe any such limitations. In six months, the position had changed radically. In the autumn of 1936, Stalin had had to argue and exert pressure to secure the arrest and trial even of potential rivals. Now, he could order the arrest of his closest colleagues without consulting anyone. He could strike when and where he liked, without appeal. The point at which his despotism became an absolute autocracy may be dated as the February–March plenum.
There were still steps to be taken to ensure the irrevocability of the victory. The demoralized and defeated rank and file of the Central Committee, convicted of the most capital of all crimes, ineffective disloyalty, had to be mopped up. The Purge had so far only affected a limited section of the Soviet people, among whom there remained much political indiscipline to be eradicated. And the Army remained—to all appearances wholly obedient, but tyrants have often been misled on this point, and Stalin was soon to insure himself against such a mistake.
But first, the instrument of terror needed retuning. The old NKVD of Yagoda’s time was technically efficient, but in certain respects it lacked the true Stalinist spirit. In any case, its new master could not trust his predecessor’s men.
In March, Yezhov ordered the departmental chiefs of the NKVD to proceed to various parts of the country on a massive inspection. Only Slutsky of the Foreign Department and—for the moment—Pauker were not so assigned. The others, leaving shortly afterward, were arrested at the first stations out of Moscow in their various directions, and brought back to prison. Two days later, the same trick was played on the deputy heads of the departments. At the same time, Yezhov changed the NKVD in all sensitive spots.230 He had already barricaded himself in a separate wing of the NKVD building, surrounded by a formidable bodyguard and elaborate security precautions.231
On 18 March 1937232 Yezhov addressed a meeting of senior officers of the NKVD in the Secret Police club room at the Lubyanka. He denounced Yagoda as a former Tsarist police spy and a thief and an embezzler, and went on to speak of “Yagoda’s spies” in the NKVD. He proceeded to clean up the remaining Yagoda cadres. They were arrested in their offices by day or in their homes by night. Chertok, the bullying interrogator of Kamenev, threw himself from his twelfth-floor apartment. Other officers shot themselves, or committed suicide by jumping from their office windows.233 Most went passively, Bulanov, arrested at the end of March, among them.234 Three thousand of Yagoda’s NKVD officers are reported executed in 1937,235 while over the whole period about 20,000 NKVD men “fell victim.”236 Of his departmental chiefs, Molchanov, Mironov, and Shanin were to be denounced as Rightist conspirators,237 organized as such in the OGPU in 1931 and 1932, while Pauker (who disappeared in the summer) and Gay were transmuted to spies,238 together with Pauker’s deputy Volovich. (Pauker, a Jew, was spoken of as specifically a German spy.)239
On 3 April it was announced that Yagoda himself had been arrested for “offenses of a criminal nature in connection with his official duties.”240 Next day, an announcement was made of a new People’s Commissar and Assistant People’s Commissar of Communications.241 The transfer of the former Assistant People’s Commissar G. E. Prokofiev was also published. Although he was still named as “Comrade,” he was arrested shortly afterward as a Rightist and later attempted suicide in prison.242 The wives of both men were also arrested and were sent to a camp.243 Yagoda’s dacha was taken over by Molotov.244
Yezhov now had his machine cleared and ready for action. At the same time, the other main element in the Purge mechanism, Vyshinsky’s Prosecutor’s apparatus, was being similarly renovated. A number of the old Prosecutors had attempted to maintain a semblance of legality. For example, the Assistant Chief Prosecutor of Water Transport had put in a memorandum on 26 June 1936 urging this. Similar protests were made by a number of provincial Prosecutors—for example in Bryansk, where two were arrested “for spreading false and defamatory rumors.” Ninety percent of the provincial Prosecutors were removed, and many of them were arrested. “Vyshinsky carried out a mass purge in the organs of the Prosecutor’s office. With his sanction, many prominent workers in the Prosecutor’s Office who had tried in one way or another to mitigate repressive measures and stop the lawlessness and arbitrariness were arrested and subsequently perished.”245 As late as the beginning of 1938, the ironically titled Stalinist law journal Socialist Legality246 called for further work in purging “fascist agents” among the Prosecutors.
The authorities on Soviet law who had inculcated the “formalist” attitude to legality were held to responsibility. The Deputy Commissar for Justice, the Soviet Union’s leading legal theorist, E. Pashukanis, was severely criticized in January 1937247 and shot, and in April was to be linked by Vyshinsky with Bukharin as a wrecker “who has now been exposed.”248 Another unsatisfactory Deputy Commissar for Justice, V. A. Degot, was arrested on 31 July 1937. Sent to camp, he died in 1944.249
By early spring, all the machinery was in good order. The old Communist police and prosecutors, ruthless as they had been, had not proved sufficiently so for the new phase. Russians who had thought that the country was already in the grip of terrorists were now to see what terror really meant.
7
ASSAULT ON THE ARMY
Ils sauront bientôt que nos balles
Sont pour nos propres générawc
“The Internationale”
On 11 June 1937 it was announced that the flower of the Red Army Command had been charged with treason, and next day that they had been tried and executed. Unlike the victims of the political purges, there had been virtually no public build-up of feeling against the generals. For most people, in the Soviet Union and outside, the news came as a complete and shocking surprise. No details were given of the “treason.” The “campaign” appearing in the papers on 12 June could hardly have the effect obtained on previous occasions by months or years of abuse. The newspapers did their best with meetings demanding the death penalty for the “foul band of spies”; there had already been time for Demyan Bedny to compose a fifty-four-line poem including the names of the generals in the rhyme scheme; and in the pages around them, factory demonstrators, the Academy of Sciences, the polar explorers on Rudolph Island, and in fact representatives of the entire community demanded the shooting of the traitors, which had, as it turned out, already taken place. On 15 June, Pravda published Voroshilov’s report to a meeting of members of the Government and the Military Soviet of the People’s Commissariat of Defense on the crimes of the soldiers. They had “admitted their treacherousness, wrecking and espionage.”